


Sillage

by Misaya



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Dubious Morality, Established Relationship, Fake/Pretend Relationship, False Memories, M/M, Memories, Memory Alteration, Misuse of the Force, Regret, Sexual Content, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-20 03:03:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5989786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren is horrible with maintaining relationships, and wants to keep the one he has with Hux as perfect as possible through any means available. What Hux doesn't remember can't hurt him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sequence 01

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tashacho (froggy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/froggy/gifts).



> >you can send me kylux prompts @ misayawriting.tumblr.com

The message on Kylo’s comm popped up, a harsh buzzing tone that broke his concentration and he would have flung the device across the room to shatter on the opposite wall had it not been an incoming message from Hux.

“Very unoriginal,” was all it read. Kylo frowned at it, swiping the holographic screen away as he tried, unsuccessfully, to put Hux from his mind. The man had been occupying the forefront of his thoughts for days now, ever since their last fight, the subject of which had seemed to dissipate as quickly as his anger had.

“I’m sorry,” he tapped back quickly, sending the message out through their own private communication channel, and the little opened notice pinged back to him a mere moment later. Hux must not have been busy, or he must have been prioritizing Kylo’s messages to read it so quickly, and Kylo felt guilt raging in him a tempest as he tried to swallow down the imposed inequalities of their relationship. It never worked, and the metal taste lingered in the crevices of his mouth for ages like an old friend.

“Sorry isn’t good enough, Ren,” came the reply, and Kylo tried not to wince. He could almost feel Hux’s irritation and anger sweeping up from the floorboards, where he was sure Hux was pacing in his office and irritatedly trying to sweep up the petals of the exotic Jakku tea roses Kylo had scattered across the room. Perhaps that had been a mistake, Kylo thought to himself now as he pinched roughly at his thigh through the black fabric of his pants and waited impatiently for the right reply to come swimming out of the ether to him. Hux only called him that when he was angry, when he was flaming mad, and Kylo was horrible at the whole business of redemption.

“I don’t know what you want me to say!” he yelled at the comm, frustrated. His anger swung out in great swathing loops, and a lamp on his nightstand flung itself against the wall in distress. The shards of glass glittered and sparked sharp on the floor, and he frowned at it in distaste as he mentally added it on to the list of things Hux would certainly have to scold him about whenever the other man decided Kylo had been put through enough suffering.

The comm beeped again.

“I heard that. I don’t expect you to say anything. I’m just disappointed with you.”

God. Kylo ran his hands through his hair, tugging at its roots in abject despair. Hux was infuriating, and granted, Kylo knew he’d fucked up, knew that he was the one to blame. He should have killed Dameron when he’d had the chance, should have crushed him like a beetle beneath his boot when the necessary information had been wrung out of him.

But this. He didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve Hux’s condescension and disparaging looks and the empty landscape in the other half of his bed that stretched out cold and heartless and a gleaming incandescent white in the middle of the forced night cycle they’d all been subject to and which his body stubbornly refused to accept.

The anger had faded into disappointment, clearly, and Kylo ground out a shard of glass beneath the heel of his boot, gritting his teeth as the sharp grit crunched and crackled on the floor. It would probably scratch the panels, he thought with a savage smile. It would annoy Hux to no end.

“How can I make you not disappointed in me?” he asked the comm, looking at the piece of technology forlornly. It beeped curiously up at him, its voice activated sensors unable to detect whether or not he’d been attempting to send a message. He waved away the holographic screens with a soft sigh as he fell onto his bed, disconsolate. The smooth, clean cotton was sterile beneath his cheek, and he bunched it up roughly in his fists, wrinkling the sheets as his mind raced through different options.

In the past, the only thing that had helped had been time, and lots of it. But Kylo was an impatient man.

Absentmindedly, he flicked his hand in the general vicinity of the shattered light bulb, watching the shards glitter and glisten in the air as they floated to arrange themselves in a neat pile of broken glass on the corner of his room’s desk.

An idea began to form in the back of his mind as he watched the glass collapse gently out of its rigid pyramid structure he’d forced it into, but he tried to push back the thoughts. They sent a chill and a sense of rigid disgust shivering through him.

“I’m sorry,” he tried again, instructing the comm to send the message to Hux. It was the only thing he knew how to say. The ping of the opened notification worked its way back to him, but apparently Hux had no further comments to add.

Well. _Two could play at that game_ , Kylo thought, frowning at the stationary, silent device and closed his eyes, trying not to think about the idea that had started to spread poison across his thoughts.

* * *

 

He tried to pointedly avoid Hux for the rest of that week, a task that was surprisingly easy enough what with the flurry the base was in in the attempt to locate the missing droid and the renegade storm trooper. He knew well that Hux was busy, that Hux had more important matters to attend to than Kylo’s supposedly “petulant childishness.” The remembered insult and the weight of Hux’s disapproval rested heavy on Kylo’s shoulders, and he found himself growing short-tempered as his self-appointed abstinence drew out. Hux appeared unaffected, and though Kylo knew it was childish, knew it was petulant, he couldn’t help but pitch fits every time he got back into the safety and soundproofed walls of his quarters in the base. At the last meeting with the Supreme Leader, Hux hadn’t even so much as glanced his way, and this, more than anything else that Hux had or hadn’t done recently, cut Kylo to the quick.

Tonight. It would have to be tonight, before he lost his nerve. The anger and desperation frothed and sloshed inside him, and his footsteps were quick and agonized, the clicks of his heels echoing off the panels of the corridors, glaring at anyone and everyone in his way.

He rapped smartly on the door to Hux’s quarters. When no answer came, he knocked again. Harder this time, loud forceful bangs that left his knuckles bruised and stinging, and he focused on the small pinpricks of pain to try and distract him from the nauseating nature of the solution he had come up with.

The doors swished open with a smooth hiss, and Kylo vaulted in before Hux could change his mind. Hux looked up from his paperwork, residual stacks from earlier today, his mouth opening and an irritated crease appearing between his eyebrows.

“What do you want, Kylo?” he snapped. He clearly hadn’t been expecting him, and Kylo was mildly gladdened to hear Hux use his name. The thaw was coming, it seemed, Hux having been worn down by a long week and the stress of chasing after the missing droid, and maybe – maybe he wouldn’t have to -?

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, without thinking. A mistake. Hux’s frown deepened, shallow grooves through his face drawing dark outlines of disapproval around his mouth.

“If that’s all you have to say, then you can leave,” Hux said, shortly.

“No, no, I –“ Kylo swallowed roughly, trying to resist the urge to wilt beneath the ferocity of Hux’s glare. He cleared his throat, preparing himself, layering his tones with poisoned honey. “You are not angry with me,” he said, finally, sending out tiny tendrils of the Force to poke and prod at the fortress of Hux’s mind.

Hux tried to wave them away irritably, as though he could see them, as though he could sense them, and Kylo hoped for a moment that the man would push him away, that Hux might save him from becoming the monster he’d tried never to become. “What do you think you’re doing?” Hux hissed, but the concentrated bitter anger in his expression had already started to leach out, had started to give way to a bittersweet blankness.

Kylo swallowed roughly, tears pricking at the corners of his vision as he cleared his throat to repeat his statement. “You are not angry with me.”

The Force had found its way in through chinks in Hux’s armor, giving Kylo access to Hux’s thoughts and memories. They were arranged in neatly ordered stacks, much like the man himself, Kylo thought with a wry smile as he searched frantically through the piles of memory and emotion for the incidence in question.

Ah, yes, here it was, sitting in the center of a pearly polished pile. Kylo could feel the anger radiating from it in trickles that stained him black as he picked up the offending emotion and ripped it to shreds. The darkness started to leak out softly from all the memories since, and Kylo sighed with a sick sense of satisfaction as he withdrew from Hux’s mind and let Hux come into his own again.

After a few moments, Hux blinked up at him.

“Kylo?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow up at him. “What do you want?” It was said without ire, without irritation.

“Nothing,” Kylo replied with a shrug, trying to tamp down the rising sense of nausea and the sense of horrifying power that accompanied it. “I just missed you.”

“Oh. I guess it has been a while, hasn’t it?” Hux stared at him for a moment before smiling softly, warmly. The creases of irritation between his brows disappeared, smoothing away into his skin. “Well, go lie down, the night cycle’s going to start soon.” Hux nodded toward the bed on the other side of the room. “I’ll be there shortly.”

Kylo wriggled his way beneath Hux’s clean, pressed sheets, breathing in the smell of soap and the spicy aftershave that Hux used, and turned to face the wall. After a few more moments, the light clicked off, and Kylo could hear Hux padding his way to bed, the mattress dipping and groaning softly as Hux clambered in behind him.

“You’re tense,” Hux murmured shortly, tossing an arm nonchalantly over Kylo’s waist as he drew them closer to press kisses to the rigid set of Kylo’s shoulders. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kylo gritted out. “Just thinking about that droid.”

The moment the words were out, he wanted to take them back. What if Hux, beyond all odds, remembered his anger, despite Kylo having shredded that particular memory to pieces? What if his renewed irritation would make him remember the weight and insistence of the Force inside the walls of his mind? What if, what if –

“It is a problem, yes,” Hux mumbled, slicing neatly through Kylo’s building sense of doubt. “But I have confidence that we’ll be able to track it down. The First Order is mighty.”

“The First Order is mighty,” Kylo echoed back, emptily, and allowed Hux to turn him into his kisses, wishing his mind could be wiped blank just as easily.


	2. Sequence 02

The next time was purely done with the best intentions, really, truly it was, and that was the story Kylo was sticking to. But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t convince himself of the fact, and Hux, of course, was none the wiser as to the source of Kylo’s present anguish.

The renegade storm trooper had been located, along with the runaway droid and an unknown presence of some interest, on Jakku. That would have been all well and fine and good, had Kylo not gotten into a spat with Phasma after making some comment under his breath about how this would never have happened if she’d watched her subordinates better.

“Excuse me?” she’d asked, tugging off her helmet to get a better look at him, glaring down and using the full three inches she had over him to her advantage. He refused to be intimidated, and glared back up at her. “Care to repeat that?”

“I said,” he snapped back, gritting his teeth and curling his hands into fists, “none of this would have happened if you’d just been paying attention to your storm troopers.”

Phasma rolled her eyes, and Kylo was sorely tempted to smack the exasperated expression off her face. “And none of this would have happened if you’d just gotten the information out of that Resistance fighter like you were supposed to, Lord Ren.” She laid sarcasm thick on the last two words, and anger got the better of Kylo as it had many times in the past. A glass paperweight went flying by, narrowly missing her head and smashing against the opposite wall. This alerted Hux to the altercation Kylo and Phasma were having, and he hurried over, clicking off his Datapad, a tick of annoyance starting at the corner of his eye.

“What’s going on here?” he hissed, glaring up at the two of them. Kylo felt suitably cowed, felt the anger draining out of him beneath Hux’s stern glare.

“Nothing,” he muttered, shooting one last venomous stare at Phasma. “Nothing at all.”

He was about to leave, turning sharply on his heel and his black robes swirling around him, when Hux reached out and grabbed his wrist with an iron grip. “This doesn’t look like nothing,” Hux stated, and Kylo groaned as Hux tugged him back forcefully to face Phasma again. She didn’t look like she was going to give ground, and Kylo was almost tempted to apologize.

Almost, had he not caught the faint ghost of a supercilious smile flitting over the captain’s face.

On a hair trigger, he turned to Hux to plead his case. “I was just informing Captain Phasma here” – he placed heavy emphasis on her title, reveling in the irritation that settled into her eyes – “that she should perhaps manage her soldiers a little better, so we can avoid situations like the one we have presently at hand.”

Hux sighed, letting Kylo’s wrist drop. Kylo’s victory was short-lived, and he snatched his hand away as though burned. “Don’t you have better thing to do than get into quarrels with other officers, Kylo?” Hux asked, exasperated, massaging his temples. A headache was building, a class A migraine; Kylo could all but feel the storm clouds spilling through Hux’s mind, sparking off negativity and throbs of pain in all the neurons they passed over, and he wanted to reach out and pluck the tendrils of agony out of Hux’s mind and shred them away.

Phasma sniffed, putting her helmet back on and marching away down the corridor. The heels of her boots clicked sharply on the panels, fading away as she disappeared down a hallway. Kylo made to speak again, but Hux held up his hand, turning away from him already.

“I’m busy,” Hux gritted out from between his teeth; the migraine had started to break in full force now, clearly, and Kylo winced in sympathy as he felt the first full throb of pain resonate across Hux’s thoughts. It was a bad one; muted even though it was, Kylo still felt slightly giddy with the hurt, and if the way Hux was squinting at his Datapad and turning down the brightness notch by notch was any indication, he was having a horrible time of it too. “Go find someone else to bother for now, Ren.”

“Can I help?” Kylo asked, frowning. Hux had closed his eyes, the holographic displays of the datapad playing over the thin skin of his eyelids, the numbers and plans rushing by in meaningless streams that he knew Hux would have to play back later to get any relevant information out of. “I could make your headache go away.”

Hux’s eyes shot open at that. He winced at Kylo, trying to frown, but he gave up and settled for pinching the bridge of his nose ineffectually. “Get out of my head,” he hissed, his words bitten and choked. Kylo pitied him, an emotion that he had long despised, and he wanted to make it go away.

That had been his rationale, anyway, as he’d reached out and cupped Hux’s face, gloved thumbs stroking over the chiseled lines of Hux’s jaw. Hux tried to bat him away, but his pushes were light, ineffectual, and Kylo ignored his mild flailing as he touched his forehead to Hux’s, feeling the heat and fever rush of the pain thrashing its wanton way through Hux’s mind.

“Shh, shh, shh,” he breathed, closing his eyes and concentrating.

Hux gave up, going lax and limp in Kylo’s grasp with a sigh. “Don’t think that this little mind trick of yours is going to make me forgive you quite so quickly, Kylo,” Hux muttered, but he wasn’t fighting back anymore, and Kylo nudged his way into the fortress of Hux’s mind easily enough. A welcome visitor, this time, and up to that point, he’d had no intention of trying to make Hux forgive him.

The source of the migraine was rooted deep inside Hux’s mind, springing up from the very core of him and leaking out to tarnish everything with red. Kylo followed the thick trails of burning crimson, tried to focus on Hux’s labored breathing to ground himself. He swabbed up the sticky sludges of pain as neatly as he could, smiling slightly as the residual smears the migraine had left over Hux’s mind began to melt away. He felt Hux’s sigh of relief against his lips.

The most recent memories were stored at the forefront of Hux’s mind, and under the pretense of clearing up more nonexistent anger there, Kylo worked his way through the neatly ordered piles of memory and extracted his little fight with Phasma.

“Kylo,” Hux murmured, and Kylo froze, refusing to relinquish his grasp on the memory. Surely Hux couldn’t know, surely Hux couldn’t even begin to quantify which of his many memories Kylo was examining. “Kylo?” Hux’s tone was questioning now, curious at the pause, and Kylo quickly ripped out the memory before he lost the opportunity. More memories scattered out from the pile, but a quick glance at them revealed no useful information: what Hux had eaten for breakfast, Hux’s thoughts on the current state of the storm troopers quarters, and Kylo hastily nudged them to the side before making a swift retreat from Hux’s mind.

When he opened his eyes again, Hux was quirking an eyebrow at him. A faint tick of displeasure was still present at the corner of his left eye, but Kylo just chalked that up to the last vestiges of the thwarted migraine making their way out into the atmosphere.

“No public displays of affection during working hours,” Hux muttered, swatting Kylo’s arm with his datapad before turning away. “You should know better.”

“Sorry,” Kylo mumbled, apologizing for much more than that. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Fortunately Phasma wasn’t around to witness our little tryst,” Hux said, already immersed in the holographic data stream. Kylo stiffened. “Go and play with her, why don’t you? I’m sure she has some storm troopers that are just begging to be on the receiving end of your lightsaber.”

Kylo gaped. Hux? Making a joke? That wasn’t like him at all. A sense of unease welled heavy in the pit of his belly, but he shoved it away frantically, trying not to think about it.

“Well?” Hux was looking at him expectantly. “Go on. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I’m sure a few more internally generated incident reports couldn’t hurt.” He smiled lightly at Kylo, a genuine smile that unnerved Kylo as much as it pleased him.

“Right,” Kylo muttered, backing out of the room and hurrying down the corridors, thoughts whirling haphazard through his head.

* * *

“Thank you for taking away that migraine earlier,” Hux murmured, grinning down at Kylo as he tugged one of Kylo’s legs to hook around his waist. Kylo swallowed roughly, tried to focus on the pleasure sparking just under his skin everywhere Hux touched, but it was impossible. “You’ve been…uncannily considerate lately,” Hux mused, slotting a finger into Kylo and nudging at the firm nub of Kylo’s prostate. Kylo yelped, pushing back into the touch. If Hux would just stop talking, he thought forlornly to himself, he could enjoy himself properly.

“Please,” he choked out, his words getting lost in a whine as Hux expertly worked in another finger to stroke and stretch at his insides. “Tell me what you’re going to do to me.”

“Tell you?” Hux quirked an eyebrow down at him. “But that would ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?”

Kylo groaned, flinging his arms over his eyes and arching into Hux’s touch as Hux slowly wriggled a third finger in, all three digits working in tandem to stretch Kylo open as much as possible in preparation for Hux’s cock. Nothing was a surprise anymore, and this was far from one, as far as Kylo was concerned.

Hux sighed as he tugged his fingers out, and Kylo heard the pop of the cap of a small vial of oil that had been previously discarded in the sheets, followed quickly by the slick sound of damp skin. Gnawing at the swell of his kiss-bitten lower lip, Kylo peeked out from a gap in his arms, flushing as he watched the tip of Hux’s cock peep out of the tight circle of his fist as the general gave himself a few strokes, slicking the skin with oil.

“Ready?” Hux asked, uncharacteristically kind, and Kylo wanted Hux to slap him around, wanted Hux to make his way into him without warning, without so much as apology, wanted Hux to take him and fuck him and –

“Kylo?” Hux repeated, staring down at him, and Kylo realized belatedly that he hadn’t yet responded. “Are you ready?”

He nodded quickly, sighing and tossing his head back into the soft pillows as Hux nudged into him, inch by inch of burning skin. Hux filled him more than satisfactorily, but not even the quick pace that they settled into and the rough thrusts that had Hux’s hips slapping against him more often than not were enough, and Kylo reached up to pinch at the sore, swollen buds of his nipples, gasping at the way the pain and prickling sensitivity raced through him to layer the sensations over the pleasure knotted tight in his abdomen.

A particular vicious pinch and twist had Kylo tightening abruptly around Hux, gasping and crying out as his orgasm struck him without notice, thoroughly lovely and unsatisfactory in turns, and Hux groaned roughly, his fingers gripping bruises into the swells of Kylo’s hips as he came, his hips still circling lightly to work them both through the aftershocks.

Kylo sighed as Hux pulled his softening cock out before wriggling up next to Kylo to join him in the nest of pillows. Hux was tired; Kylo could feel the soft fatigue leaching out from the other man’s bones into his own.

He wanted to apologize, wanted to tell Hux everything he’d done, but there was the lingering question at the forefront of his mind exactly what good that would accomplish. Hux was happy, Hux was perfectly fine, their relationship was perfectly fine and Kylo intended to keep it that way. What he was doing wasn’t technically wrong, he supposed. It was just merely doing a bit of roughshod editing. History written by the victors and all that, except Kylo thought that triumph had never before tasted quite so sour.

He opened his mouth to beg for forgiveness, but before he had the chance to, he turned his head on the pillow and found that Hux was already asleep.

Sighing, Kylo reached down to tug the sheets up more securely around the two of them, patting at Hux’s shoulder comfortingly as he pushed away the thought of his wrongdoings for another time.


	3. Sequence 03

If Phasma or any of the other officers on the base were surprised by the abrupt turnaround Hux seemed to have had, they didn’t show it, and the guilt tightened into a sharp knot in the pit of Kylo’s belly with every passing moment. Hux was none the wiser for it, and he ignored the half-second of confusion in Phasma’s expression when the two of them walked in together for a debriefing only a few days later.

“You’ve done something to him,” Phasma muttered lowly, her voice muffled and muted and strained, almost drowned out by the earnest speech Mitaka was making at the front of the conference room. Kylo stiffened. “Haven’t you?” It was a rhetorical question, and it took every bit of Kylo’s self-restraint to refrain from shouting at her.

“Untrue,” he hissed back, trying to will her away, trying to feign interest in the strategic formations that were spinning around in the middle of the table for their consideration. Hux was taking notes. She was far too observant for her own good, and the blatant realization that his actions were not going unnoticed only made the guilt in the pit of his belly all the more excruciating.

Kylo tried to pay attention to Mitaka’s speech, something about optimizing the energy intake of the Finalizer, but the words and numbers that were scrolling past him on the holographic display meant close to nothing, and he could only hope that Hux would no call on him to give his opinion.

“Could you repeat that?” Hux asked, and Kylo tensed in his seat. Mitaka looked uncertain.

“Er, repeat what, sir?” he asked, belatedly, and a frown crossed Hux’s face.

“What you were saying about the Hosnian system,” he spat out, his tongue turned sharp and bitter at Mitaka’s perceived incompetence, and Kylo stiffened further in his chair. He hadn’t been listening closely to whatever the lieutenant had had to say, but he was rather sure that Mitaka hadn’t said anything about the resistance base in the past ten minutes.

Mitaka hemmed, hawed, blurted out some specs that were most likely completely inaccurate about how maximization of energy would be useful in relation to destruction of the planet, and Hux nodded tersely, as though to indicate that this was exactly what he had been asking Mitaka to confirm. Kylo could feel Phasma’s glare piercing into him.

* * *

 

“Utter incompetence,” Hux grumbled as he walked out of the refresher that evening, a damp towel slung over his neck. His hair was wet from the shower, dark crimson strands falling over his forehead, and Kylo put away the datapad he had been using, going over the minutes laboriously taken during Mitaka’s speech by some unnamed secretary.

As he’d suspected, there had been nothing in there about the Resistance until Hux had spoken up, and even the transcript had showed a slight faltering, a confusion, a disconnect, before it had resumed its flawless continuity.

“What’s that?” he asked, trying to paste a look of boredom on his face.

“Mitaka,” Hux muttered, sitting down on the edge of the bed. The curve of his back was smooth and slender in the soft glow of his chamber’s lighting. “His conduct and method of information deliverance is not fitting for a superior officer of the First Order. I expect firm, clear answers, especially if the topic has just been broached and there is no confusion as to what I am discussing.”

“Right,” Kylo agreed, uneasily, turning his face away so that Hux wouldn’t see the expression of anxiety that had lodged itself permanently onto his face. “I’m sure it was an honest mistake.”

This had Hux turning to look at him, frowning. “Unusually forgiving of you, Ren,” he said, and Kylo struggled not to wince under Hux’s intense brand of scrutiny. “Harboring some kindnesses towards Mitaka that I should know about?” A wave of jealousy, strong and bitter, swept over Kylo, and he almost wavered under the barrage of Hux’s feelings, hastening to explain.

“No, no,” he stammered. “I’m just…trying to show more restraint.”

After a few more moments of Hux’s stare, Kylo sighed in relief as Hux turned away, hunching over to rub at his hair with the towel. He looked tender, vulnerable, and Kylo regretted ever having taken him apart.

“That’s wise of you,” Hux agreed, standing up and heading over to the refresher door to toss his used towel into a laundry basket before padding back to bed and slotting himself between the sheets next to Kylo. “It’ll save me the paperwork from your recklessness.”

Hux fell asleep before Kylo could come up with any more lines to continue the conversation with, and he absentmindedly traced the curve of Hux’s jaw, the seashell swirl of his ear, prodding lightly into Hux’s mind again to view the extent of the damage.

Hux’s defenses were much lower now that he was asleep, and Kylo could see everything in frightening clarity. The neatly ordered stacks were still in place, but some had tipped over, thoughts and ideas and memories falling and overlapping each other with soft tinkling chimes even as Kylo watched. His fingers twitched at his sides, knotting with worry in the sheets, and he scrabbled desperately to try and place them back in the order they had been in.

It was impossible, and snippets and flashes of Hux’s mind flowed quicksilver in front of Kylo’s eyes and in his hands even as he tried to push them away. He was drowning in them, the beginnings of a flood of forgetting, of misplacing, the storm far too much for Kylo to contain.

He dammed it up quickly, building blocks of grey and white to contain the tumbling thoughts, shutting off the collapsing sector with breathless rapidity, praying the whole while that whatever he had cut off from the rest was not important.


	4. Sequence 04

The lemniscate spirals into infinity, and it had Hux hooked softly into one of its loops. Once the memories had been tugged out, had fallen to the ground with the sound of cymbals crashing resonating in the shells of Kylo’s ears, he had been unable to keep the rest from tipping over. Hux’s mind neat and orderly became chaos, and it was only through sheer force of will that Kylo managed to pluck out and rearrange the words for Hux’s speech on the steps into coherence.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, and Hux’s voice came out stilted, the words ragged at the edges even as Kylo fought to smooth out the syllables to rest easy on Hux’s tongue. It was harder than he’d thought, the words going all slippery in his clutches, and he was glad for the chilling, biting wind that blew intermittent gusts over them.

Phasma was nowhere in sight, and Kylo was glad for that. Her suspicious glares rested heavy in between his shoulder blades whenever she was in the vicinity, and the guilt was burning a hole in the pit of his belly.

Hux came to him later that night, cheeks red and flushed with victory, the freckles on his skin standing out stark like constellations. Kylo could feel the triumph running electric in Hux’s veins, strong and clumsily veiled. Hux was getting worse at controlling himself, his face no longer so stoic, his mouth no longer set in the firm, tight line he had assigned himself since becoming General. Kylo vaguely wondered if this was what Hux might have been like had he not had the mantles of leadership and the shadow of his father falling over him.

“You did it,” he said, bleakly, as Hux slipped out of his coat and draped it over the back of a chair. “Congratulations. You’re a very powerful speaker.”

“Thank you,” Hux said, nodding at him, curling the sleek leather of his belt into tight coils wrapped around his fist. His hands were shaking, and Kylo wondered if it was possible that Hux knew, that Hux could feel where parts of himself had gone missing, a sudden blackness in the middle of his thoughts where none had existed before. “Your support is welcome, as always, Lord Ren.”

“I hate it when you call me that,” Kylo muttered, rolling over in the sheets to face the wall. He could hear the rustling of clothes being folded as Hux slipped out of them and laid them neatly to the side for a later date. “You know that.”

A pause, then. “Oh, I’ve offended you.” Hux’s tone was flat, a quiver of irritation slipping into his words. Kylo wanted to lash out, a trickle of guilt and anger confusing themselves together and twisting into his thoughts. “Forgive me.” His tone was mocking, and Kylo’s fingers curled into fists in the sheets. “The least you could do is try to tell me of your little quirks, though I suppose there’s no use if I’m going to have to tread on shells around you anyway.”

“I have told you,” Kylo muttered, refusing to look at Hux even as the mattress dipped beneath his weight as Hux slid under the covers behind his back. His warmth, burning like fire, leached into the sheets to wriggle fingers against Kylo’s skin, but Kylo would not give into temptation that he deserved not at all. “I’ve told you lots of times.”

“You haven’t,” Hux insisted, and Kylo could feel the rigidity of denial. “I would remember if you had. I’ve made endless lists about every little bit of you that infuriates me, and I cannot seem to recall that that particular detail has been on any one of them.”

Kylo tried to block out Hux’s words. Tried not to listen. Failed.

“I’m doing my best to make us good,” Kylo muttered. Hux scoffed from behind him, but there was no real venom in it, harmless nips and bites that seemed to hurt even more than a reprimand might have.

“You’re trying,” Hux acknowledged after a long moment of stilted silence that Kylo was sure only he could feel. “I appreciate that. I appreciate you.” It was uncharacteristic, the sweetness of the syllables sickly in Kylo’s ears, and he wanted to claw them out of the air as quickly as they escaped. The man Hux was now was no longer the same man Kylo had grown infatuated with, and the constellations were falling out of the sky to crash and burn at his feet.

* * *

 

When the time came to destroy the resistance base, Kylo could not bring himself to stand next to Hux, bathed in the red flares and crimson glow. He had planned out the scenario hundreds of thousands of times, the actions and ideas crystallizing in his mind so sharp and potent that he felt as though he had lived out the actions more times than he could possibly count, but when the cheers rang out across the Finalizer, winding into every nook and cranny of his mind, he found that he could not bring himself to find Hux and watch victory crest over the planes of his face.

He was afraid of what he would find there, terrified, and he turned himself inward. The towers of his own mind were jagged and dark; his footsteps echoed along the winding corridors and twisting alleyways of his memories, and it disgusted him to find that he still cast a shadow. The light was still inside him, no matter how many times he’d tried to root it out, and even plucking his own memories away caused them to grow back just as quickly before he’d even dropped the poison things to the ground to shatter at his feet.

He could not forget what he had done, and the light grew a little dimmer, his shadow stretching out into a man he no longer recognized.

The end was approaching quickly, and Kylo wondered how long it would take Snoke to notice that his most favored general was no longer as sharp, no longer as quick. Maybe he already had, and the beginning of the downward spiral had already wound its way into existence.

* * *

 

He pretended to be asleep when Hux forced his way into his chambers later that night, and though Hux’s disappointment tinged the air with its sourness, Kylo refused to open his eyes and acknowledge it.


	5. Sequence 05

A trickle of sweat crept its way down the loop of Kylo's ragged scarf, and the hiss of hot air from the vents in his mask seemed too loud, competing for fractions of his attention with the blood pulsing roughly in his eardrums and the confused scatter of Hux's thoughts so noisy and so rampant that he could hardly believe that Snoke hadn't already noticed, holographic though he was. The man was stumbling, stuttering over words and sentences and facts that should have come easily to the tip of his tongue, and Kylo curled his fingers into tight fists by his sides, wishing he could cut through the leather and carve crescents into the skin. The embarrassment was too much to handle, and surely Snoke must have known. Surely Snoke saw right through the two of them. One didn't get into such a high position of power by sitting back and being a passive observer. 

Snoke listened impassively, impartially, to Hux's testimony, but Kylo swore he could feel Snoke's gaze burning curious holes directly through the very fabric of him. 

"That's expected, General," Snoke remarked, when it appeared that no more painfully drawn forward words would be forthcoming. Hux thought there was nothing wrong with what he had just said, Kylo spinning an alternate version of the encounter for his benefit and planting it gently into his mind where he watched it take root and blossom like kudzu. But everything had been wrong, and when Snoke dismissed Hux without doing the same for Kylo, he knew that Snoke knew. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. Hux's footsteps clipped away down the corridor, echoing, the door opening and closing behind him in two twin hisses of steam. 

"You've made him a mess," Snoke commented, sighing and shifting slightly in his chair; the milky light from the skylights spilled down through him to bathe Kylo in all his guilt and glory. "You've taken one of the best resources the First Order has to offer, and destroyed it. Selfish, foolish boy." He spat out these words contemptuously, and Kylo flushed with shame beneath his mask, but did not make a move to deny it. "Your actions as of late have been questionable. It might make a casual observer believe that, ah, perhaps you were carrying a torch for the Resistance."

Snoke leaned forward, his ghastly pale hands gripping at the arms of his chair, looming hundreds of times bigger and more intimidating than Kylo had ever seen him before. Hundreds, all those zeroes, Snoke probably wasn't even in the same system as he was, and yet Kylo could not help but feel the chill racing up through his heart as Snoke narrowed his eyes at him. 

"Would that happen to be the case?" His voice was silky smooth, dangerous, and Kylo swallowed roughly, the motion like broken glass. 

"No, of course not," he gasped. 

"I know the call to the light is strong in you," Snoke parried back, easily, as though he'd gone over this exact conversation and its outcomes many times before. "One might not fault you for wanting to return to your mother, even. General Organa has a particular way about her, able to tame even the wildest...beasts." He let the last word drop into Kylo's ears, reverberating in Kylo's mind. 

"I didn't mean to hurt him," Kylo blurted out, when it became apparent that Snoke was waiting for him to say something, anything, to defend himself. "My emotions got the better of me."

Snoke sneered down at him. "Is that so," he stated flatly. "Whatever the reason, General Hux is of little use to me like this. Fortunately for you, and for him, I suppose, he is expendable." 

Snoke clicked off the communication, and Kylo was left with the raging sound of his fear.

* * *

 

"What did the Supreme Leader say to you after I was dismissed?" Hux asked him, sitting cross-legged on his pristine sheets, the corners tugging out of their tight tuck to wrinkle lightly around him. Kylo let the door to Hux's quarters slide shut behind him with a hiss and a click, sighing as he tugged himself listlessly out of his mask and robes. He let them fall to the floor in a swath of dark fabric, left the mask on the nightstand, turned away from the bed where Hux was sitting, looking up at him expectantly. Hungrily, almost, his hands reaching for the soft fabric of Kylo's undershirt to tug him forward into a greedy kiss. "Well? Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to fuck it out of you?"

Ah. This hadn't changed, at least, and Kylo took whatever bitter comforts he still could as he allowed Hux to pull him down, press him back into the sheets. 

"Wild horses couldn't drag it out of me," he mumbled, his voice spilling away into a breathy sigh as Hux laid a hard bite, a harder kiss, against the side of his neck. 

"No?" Hux asked, sucking bruises into the hollow of Kylo's throat, where it would linger, sore and bittersweet for ages afterward. "Good thing I've still got a fair bit of persuasion left in me." 

His fingertips skirted down Kylo's torso, wriggling their way under the undershirt to rub soothing circles into his skin. They crawled up the core of him, fanning out to rub against a nipple, to pinch to press to coax his traitorous body into responding, and Kylo felt the small sparks of bitter pleasure bursting through him to ignite the kindling rooted deep inside him. 

"See? I don't need wild horses to drag anything out of you," Hux whispered, leaving scarlet crescents over the swell of Kylo's shoulder as his free hand trailed across Kylo's thigh to palm at the swelling bulge in his slacks. "It's just this, and you'll topple for me like a house of cards, each one put perfectly into place." He punctuated his words with burning kisses, his tongue licking into Kylo's mouth like flames, and Kylo relented as he always had, as Hux always softly coerced him into doing. 

"He said you're expendable," he breathed, low, under his breath, the words covered over with the harsh crack of the zipper of his pants as Hux worked it down with nimble fingers. 

"Hm," Hux murmured back, and Kylo could tell that he hadn't heard, that he was no longer interested in whatever Snoke might have had to say about him. 

"Did you hear me?" Kylo asked, tears glossing over his eyes, wanting suddenly to get the sole burden of the word far away from him, wanting to spit it out like poison so that at the very least, they could suffer together. Foolish, selfish boy. Snoke's words echoed back at him. Had it been the other way around? He racked his memory, but the sequence refused to bubble to the surface of his mind, and in the next instant, Hux was working the waistband of his slacks over the swell of him, tossing them unceremoniously to another corner of the room as he leaned over him to scrabble in the nightstand drawer for a bottle of oil. His fingertips scraped along the underside of the drawer, scrabbling anxiety into Kylo's mind to sour the arousal furrowing down deep into the core of him. 

"It's not important," Hux breathed, lubricant retrieved, twisting off the cap frantically and pouring golden puddles into his hands, dripping onto the sheets. Unimportant, the mess, all of it, and Kylo was glad for the near total-encompassing darkness that swathed them so that Hux could not easily make out the flush of his face and the tears threatening to spill over his cheeks. "It's not important at all."

Kylo welcomed the pain of the hasty preparation, Hux's movements clumsy and impatient, and perhaps he deserved it, perhaps he was taking the muscle memory away from Hux even as he thought about it. They had spent hours like this, wrapped around each other like a snake eating its own tail, and in the end, only one would emerge victorious. 

He had reason to believe that it would not be Hux, but Kylo resolved that he would try his damnedest to make it so, to try to atone. Hux's fingers scissored and stretched him to a burn, the tip of his pointer finger roughly fumbling around his prostate, sending unexpected jolts of pleasure to pool in the pit of his belly. Kylo's muscles remembered, too, pressing back into the touch, whispering and gasping entreaties that made little indents in the shallow pond of Hux's consciousness that leached out to caress at Kylo's heartstrings. 

"I can't wait," Hux told him, flatly, and Kylo nodded, ignoring the twinge of strain in his thigh as Hux nudged him further apart, nudged one burning centimeter of himself into Kylo at a time until Kylo was sure the fire would burn him up from the inside out. His breath ran ragged in his lungs, his fingers curling into tight fists in the soiled sheets underneath him, as Hux filled him, once, twice, again, pouring all of himself into Kylo and expecting nothing in return. His fingers reached down into the tight space between them to stroke at Kylo's cock, thumbing at the head, and Kylo closed his eyes and tried to pretend that this wasn't the last time of the last times. 

Hux was expendable. Kylo wasn't. Snoke had all but said as much, but Kylo couldn't help but wonder, as the sound of Hux's harsh breathing and the slick smack of flesh filled his ears, if he could tie himself to Hux like an anchor. A sinking ship, drown them both and neither of them would be done away with. 

"I'll save you," he promised Hux, voice slack between moans, his wanting body seeking out what he could not bring himself to. His hips jerked upwards, thrusting into the clasp of Hux's fingers, rolling down into the way the head of Hux's cock rubbed firmly against his prostate. 

"Me, too," Hux gasped, his thrusts growing more erratic, more desperate, and with a jolt, Kylo realized that Hux had been responding to a miscommunication, to an expression of love he had thought he'd heard Kylo utter. The thought was enough to push him over, to snap at the knots of his rapidly frayed control, and he was coming with a sob, the rush of himself drowning out the way Hux's warmth spilled into him like flames.

* * *

 

Hux's skin was cooling quickly in the sheets, and Kylo kissed almost apologetically, almost reverentially, at the swell of Hux's shoulder. He was curled up on his right side, facing away from Kylo as he always had, but he made no attempt to push Kylo away as Kylo draped himself over him. 

"You asleep?" Kylo asked, his words still fuzzy, their limbs still sticky. "Hux?"

There was no reply. The steady, deep breathing informed him that Hux was asleep, probably just entering the first stages of his dreams.

"You're expendable," Kylo repeated, now that there was no one else to hear. "That's what he said." Hux stirred, and Kylo's heart clutched in his chest, but when Hux's eyelids fluttered open and he rolled over to look up at Kylo, there was no trace that he had heard. 

"What's that?" Hux asked, his voice slurred, a hand reaching up to palm at his eyes and try to wake himself up. "What did you say?"

"Do you really love me?" Kylo asked, frowning. A question with a question, a weak trick, but Hux's defenses were laughably low, and Kylo frowned at the thought that he'd allowed everything to get so out of control.

"Of course," Hux said. An automatic response, enough to raise Kylo's suspicions. "Of course. Don't ask me questions you already know the answer to." 

He turned away from Kylo, rolling himself easily back into his sleep again, leaving Kylo to wrap his arms tightly around himself and taste salt sharp and cloying on his lips, leaving small tracks in his skin.

* * *

 

The collapse of the base mirrored the collapse of Hux's mind, and Kylo could take little joy in either. Blood was on his hands, and any reservations his bitter subconscious might have had about returning to Ben Solo faded away quickly as he watched the life gleam right out of his father's eyes, glossed over with a muted horror at what he had done, at what he had become. 

The girl saw right through him. Rey. Ray. A shooting star that no doubt the Resistance would take under wing, and redemption would never be possible for him ever again. Redemption and forgiveness would certainly not be welcome for General Hux. His memories were self-destructing, imploding, a marionette with its strings cut. 

Kylo barely felt the razor sharp slash of pain across his face, barely felt the shove back into the snow, barely felt the chill creeping icy fingers down his collar and the sticky heat of his blood misting his vision with red. Over, it was over, selfish, foolish boy, that's how Snoke had put it. 

The leather of Hux's gloves burned frost into his leaden limbs as he pulled him out of the snow, shoved him unceremoniously onto a departing ship, senseless and riddled with fever as the flames licked an inferno beneath their boots.

* * *

 

"You saved me." Kylo's tone was flat, the scar aching something fierce. Yet, he could not stop worrying at it, picking it apart just to bleed crimson onto his hands again. "Why?"

Hux waved off his inquiry, frowning at the blood staining his fingertips. "Stop doing that. It'll get infected, and the Supreme Leader certainly won't be happy with that." 

"Snoke does not control you," Kylo tried, one last desperate maneuver. I do, went unsaid, went unwanted. 

"He made himself quite clear," Hux muttered bitterly, turning to glare at Kylo. This was real, this pure anger, and Kylo relished it for all it was worth. "He said I was expendable. You, however, are not."

Kylo's breath caught in his throat, the past delight fading away as quickly as it had come. 

"No, no," he breathed, reaching out and grabbing Hux's slender wrist to pull him down onto the cot beside him. He could feel the tension carving a path through Hux's body. One last go wouldn't hurt, he thought to himself. One last time, to alleviate the stress. 

He pressed his mouth to the corner of Hux's frown, tasting salt and the sickly sweet tang of bright new copper coins, focusing his attention on the small pieces of aggravation hidden behind laughably low barriers. He plucked out the word easily. expendable. How ugly. 

When he pulled away, Hux's expression was glazed over. 

"I'm glad you're alive," Hux ventured instead. "I love you, you know."

There it was again, a dreaded phrase from those who had once believed in Kylo - no, from those who had once believed in Ben Solo and been proved horrifyingly, unutterably incorrect. Hux poisoned the words with his tongue, shaping the missiles with his mouth, and Kylo could barely breathe for the way they undid him.

He nudged his way past the small barricades of Hux's mind, the last lines of defense, and located the misappropriated phrase that had lodged itself firmly in Hux's mind. It refused to budge. 

"Say it again," Kylo prompted, his heart skipping beats, his mind focused furiously on the small part of Hux's mind that had started to ready itself in preparation for response. 

A breath. A silence. A hesitation, and the area containing the true reply darkened suddenly. Dysfunctional. 

"I love you." 

Automatic. Kylo flung himself away from Hux, wrapping his arms tightly around himself, the taste of salt sharp on his lips. 


End file.
